The Palmer Express

Gulf State Park, huge park, cabins, the RV sites were big, and they are in the process of building a hotel and conference center.

Beautiful Beaches

Awesome boardwalks

******

Our visit was cut short.

There was a bunch of these blobs washed up on shore, so we had to research when we got home. We believe that these are Portuguese Man of War jellyfish, small dangerous guys, the biggest one we saw was just a little bigger than a quarter.

Christmas Eve appetizer, PJ’s baked oysters.

About 70 degrees out, but a little cool (for one of us) with the ocean breeze.

Standing on the pier looking back at the Emerald Beach RV Park.

Nice park, there were some ‘different people’, some were out walking their cats on leashes or in strollers. The neighbor across from us had a little dog that he kept asking his 5 pound dog “why you barking at your daddy, why are you mad at your daddy?”

On our way out of town, John took me out for breakfast to this fancy restaurant,Waffle House.At the campground we stayed at there was Convict Springs, (pictured below) the water in the spring is always at 70.5 degrees, this flows into the Suwannee River, they had kayaks available to rent. Nice campground, bike path near by, activities on the weekends.

Convict Springs, open for swimming year around and has an underwater cave system.

Our adventure to Epcot begins and the waiting in lines start.

A refreshing break

Gingerbread House at the American Adventure Pavilion

Candlelight Processional, Neil Patrick Harris narrated.

Epcot was all decked out for Christmas, and of course they had special Christmas fireworks.

Epcot at night

Karen makes a new friend

Woodsmoke Camping Resort site 315, nice big site but right on the corner so there was a lot of traffic.

Bonita Springs beach, in the 70’s but a little breezy today.Little Hickory Beach, no wind today, beautiful.

Lovers Key State Park, nice area, have to purchase a day pass but has decent facilities and a snack shack where you can, of course, get a snack or rent beach chairs.

Drove back to Minnesota for a couple Doctor appointments, another sample came back with a <5% abnormal cells, we are keeping with active observation for another year.

We took Gwen shopping for her birthday/Christmas present. We had a lot of fun picking out the perfect bike with her.

After shopping we spent the rest of the day at Jordan’s. Ben and Gwen hosted and cooked dinner. Thanks for arranging Abbie, hosting Ben, and suppling the place Jordan, we had a very fun and relaxing evening.

Dinner with good friends

On our way back to Florida we hit the once every 10 year Atlanta snowstorm, was not fun to drive through with inexperienced Alantians. The roads look clear but are covered with deep slush.

Atlantic Ocean tide pools

Budweiser brewery

The Clydesdale’s were there for the day.

Bottling and packaging.

Georgia railroad museum; roundhouse

Roundhouse turntable

The workshop, steam was the main source of power and heat.

The back streets of Savannah

Down by the waterfront.

Proabition museum. Somewhat interesting but not worth the cost.

St John the Baptist, the oldest Roman Catholic Church in Georgia.

St John’s Cathedral’s pipe organ

Tybee Island, commercialized, expensive, quaint but still beautiful.

Cool and windy day, ocean is a little chilly.

Local seafood market, not much to look at but well worth a stop.

John finds a cool treat.

The Angle oak tree, estimated to be 300 – 400 years old.

Visited Patriots Point home to the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown, the destroyer USS Laffey, and the submarine  USS Clamagore.

John the navigator

John trying his hand at steering.

Guess who was busy taking pictures, John going thru the submarine.

South Carolina’s wayside rest vending area.

Cowpens a turning point in the Revolutionary War. The victory was won by the use of a tactic known as double envelopment, the only time it was successfully used in the American Revolution.

A blackpowder demo.

Pearson Falls

We had the Fall to ourselves, only about mile hike and easy path. We really need better directions.

Yeah, we’re going to need to fold in our mirrors.

Drive to Caesar’s Head

The higher we get the foggy it’s becoming.

Pretty sure the views are not going to be there.

Kind of creepy.

Yes, there is a path somewhere here.

Long hike

The log bridge to nowhere.

We toured the Freightliner facility but were not allowed to take pictures. We would recommend doing this if you are ever in the area.

This is also a BMW plant that does tours however they were redoing some of the production lines so the tours were suspended until spring of 2018.